Municipal schools to begin new session with old books

The academic session will be new, but their books will be old. With municipal schools in the city set to re-open today, their students, whose number goes into lakhs, will be taught from second-hand books.

delhiUpdated: Jul 09, 2012 02:05 IST

Hamari Jamatia

Hindustan Times

The academic session will be new, but their books will be old. With municipal schools in the city set to re-open today, their students, whose number goes into lakhs, will be taught from second-hand books.

The three newly carved out corporations have not been able to procure enough books for the nearly 9.9 lakh students studying in the 1,700-odd municipal schools. So as a stop-gap arrangement, the authorities have decided to hand them out old books till the new ones arrive.

“Students, who have passed out of, say, class IV, will give their books to the new batch and so on. We have already informed the children about this arrangement. In fact, many have already submitted their old books,” said Mahender Nagpal, Leader of the House, North Municipal Corporation.

Moreover, the corporations haven’t bought any notebooks for the students either. So, for the first few months, students may have to purchase their own notebooks. According to a senior official, the notebooks lying unused since they were purchased last year have already been distributed among 10 per cent of the students.

In corporation schools where education is free, every year the unified MCD used to buy and distribute books and notebooks worth R8 crore. But this year, the lack of the same has been blamed on trifurcation.

Officials of the corporations say that due to trifurcation, the tender process got delayed so the students will have to ‘adjust’ with the available resources.

But even after all these ‘adjustments’, 90 per cent of children will be left without notebooks and 40 per cent without books. So the students, who belong to economically weaker sections, may have to shell out money from their own pockets.

Apart from the lack of books and notebooks, many students will also be returning to schools that lack desks, toilets, working computers and power as well as water connections. This year too, the municipal bodies have failed to buy 70,000 desks due tender issues. Thousands of computers that had been bought for imparting ‘smart’ education have also not been repaired.